Burton man who served 11 years for child’s homicide sentenced to 30 years for 2018 burglary
A Burton man who stole women’s and children’s underwear from a home in 2018 was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty earlier this year to first-degree burglary, the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office said.
Roy White, 50, of Burton, who had spent 12 years in prison for the death of a 7-year-old by abuse in 1998, pleaded guilty to the burglary on Aug. 18, according to the Solicitor’s Office press release.
He broke into the home in Burton on Sept. 8, 2018, the press release said. When the family returned home around 8:30 p.m., they spotted a man through the window. Police found a trail of women’s and children’s underwear and footprints leading from the home to White’s house nearby, the press release said. White matched the physical description given by the family, and DNA evidence from the scene matched a sample taken after his arrest, the press release said.
White’s offense was not ‘trivial,’ according to Hunter Swanson, the assistant solicitor who prosecuted the case.
“Given the defendant’s criminal history, which includes violence against children, we believe Mr. White to be a career criminal and a danger to the entire community,” Swanson said in the press release.
In 1998, White was convicted of homicide by child abuse in the death of his girlfriend’s 7-year-old daughter, Kimberly Slattery, according to previous reporting by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. Kimberly was found unresponsive by her mother, Jennifer Slattery, on Feb. 22, 1998, after she had left her in the care of White, her then-boyfriend, to go to work.
White was arrested the next day. He was originally charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct and murder, but the charges were reduced in a plea deal that involved him telling police that Jennifer Slattery knew he was a drug addict when she left Kimberly with him. Slattery was charged with the unlawful neglect of a child or helpless person in 1999, according to court records. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison and five years probation.
A 1998 autopsy report lists Kimberly’s cause of death as asphyxia and said she “died during an attack associated with sexual assault,” according to previous reporting by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. White was sentenced to 25 years for the homicide and served 12. He was released in December 2011, according to the press release.
